North Devon - Bob and Christine Bird were enjoying a lazy summer evening in their garden when they claim a UFO swooped low over their bungalow.

The astonished South Molton grandparents, their daughter and son-in-law and grandchildren, had been sitting in the back garden for about an hour before they spotted the "orange blob" slowly moving towards them at around 10pm on Saturday night.

"It started to slow down above us and it wasn't that high up, at least it didn't seem like it," Christine, 57, told the Gazette.

"As it began to move over the house, my husband went indoors to get his camera. My daughter and I went to the front door and suddenly this 'thing' started to move.

"It went up at about a 40-degree angle and shot straight into the sky so fast. It was still quite light and you could actually see the orange colour getting smaller before it disappeared among the stars.

"Even now, what we all witnessed is so hard to believe that we can't stop thinking and talking about it.

"It was absolutely amazing, something I will never forget.

"If anyone had told me the same thing, I probably wouldn't have believed them.

"But because there were four adults - perfectly sober, may I add - and two teenage grandsons who saw the tail end of it, we can't stop going on about it."

Husband Bob, 62, said that the object made no noise whatsoever.

"My dogs bark like mad at anything that flies over the house but they didn't make a sound," he said.

"I'm not a person who believes in aliens, but I am absolutely flabbergasted by what I saw.

"The colour was unbelievable - it had an orange glow around it like the flame of an electric fire. I've never seen anything like it."

He said he took three pictures of the object from the front steps of his house but mysteriously, when he got the pictures developed on Monday, there were no pictures - or even negatives -of the strange sighting.

"It's an old camera but it's never let me down before," he said. "We had taken pictures on the camera during the day and used up the rest of the film afterwards so that we could take it in to be developed.

"We couldn't wait to pick up the pictures and are so disappointed. People may call me mad or whatever but I know what I saw."